Grant for Meow Wolf plant sails past first hurdle
Public Works Committee backs plan to award arts collective up to $1.1M to buy south-side building
Meow Wolf transformed an old bowling alley on Rufina Circle into one of Santa Fe’s biggest success stories of recent years. But will the artist collective have similar success with repurposing a former Caterpillar equipment plant on the south end of Santa Fe?
The state Economic Development Department and city officials are willing to bet that it will. They are championing a proposal to award Meow Wolf up to $1.1 million to buy the building and turn it into a manufacturing facility as the homegrown business works to expand outside Santa Fe.
The proposal to award grant funds — $250,000 from the city’s economic development fund and $850,000 in Local Economic Development Act funds from the state — sailed through its first test Monday when the City Council’s Public Works Committee endorsed the plan without questions or discussion, though Councilor Renee Villarreal said she would save her questions until next week’s city Finance Committee meeting because they were financial in nature.
“That was easy,” Cam Humphres, the airport director, told the city’s new economic development director, Matthew Brown, as Brown walked out of council chambers after the committee action.
The proposal is scheduled to be considered July 17 by the Finance Committee and then by the governing body after a public hearing July 26.
The proposed city and state funding is designed to anchor Meow Wolf ’s operations in Santa Fe rather than Austin or Denver, which have been identified as expansion locations, as well as to help accelerate its
growth, CEO and co-founder Vince Kadlubek said before Monday’s meeting.
“A lot of people think that the money is just helping us move out of state. But what we’re actually doing is producing the product in New Mexico and then we’re exporting the product to other locations,” Kadlubek said. “The House of Eternal Return, for instance, that is a product. That’s what we call an immersive exhibition, so we’re going to be producing those in Santa Fe and exporting those to other cities like Denver and Austin and Vegas and wherever we can land.”
Under a proposed agreement between Meow Wolf and the city, the fiscal agent for the project, Meow Wolf must meet various milestones to get the funding, including creating at least 250 full-time jobs with an average salary of $46,000 a year by December 2021.
“In order for these jobs to count toward LEDA funding, they have to be [filled by] New Mexico residents,” Kadlubek said.
The project is expected to generate more than $5.6 million in “net revenues” to the city in gross receipts, property taxes and other fees, city documents state.
“The project will also stimulate the construction industry by generating an additional 42 direct construction jobs and approximately $1,850,000 in construction payroll,” documents state.
Converting the former Caterpillar plant, a 52,000-square-foot building in the Valdez Industrial Park at 2600 Camino Entrada, will cost an estimated $5 million, including acquisition of the land and building. Meow Wolf will contribute $4 million to the project.
Some Santa Fe residents have criticized the proposed funding for Meow Wolf, a privately held company that saw a profit of about $1 million in its first year, and Kadlubek, a close friend and vocal supporter of Mayor Javier Gonzales.
Kadlubek said the funding would create jobs and keep Meow Wolf ’s headquarters in Santa Fe. An economic impact study conducted by the state found that the project would support about $166 million in taxable sales over 10 years.
“The new headquarters will be used to create exhibits for export, (research and development) on new products, and other manufacturing developments that impact the immersive arts markets that the company is exploring,” the report states.
Said Kadlubek, “In order to employ the amount of people we want to employ and take this business into the direction we want to take it, we need to expand, we need to grow.”
While Meow Wolf would create jobs wherever it expands, employing artists and fabricators in those cities, Kadlubek said the grant funding “anchors Meow Wolf ’s headquarters in the state of New Mexico and accelerates our growth.”
“We have a lot of really eager municipalities, a lot of really eager fans out there in different cities around the country that really want us,” he said. “We even have interest from a group in Singapore to do a Meow Wolf in Singapore.”